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long forgotten; but conjecture may, possibly, unravel its etymology.2

Among the descendants of Ayus was Kâśa, whose son is noticed under the patronyms of Kâśeya," Kâsîya, and Kâśi.' The regal successors of Kâsi, and

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Kâśikâ is found in the Káśi-khanda, XXX., 70, and elsewhere. Compare Avantikâ for Avanti, as in note 1 to p. xxxiii., infra.

The vocabularists refer the word to kaś, "to shine." And herewith agrees the Kási-khaṇḍa, XXVI., 67 :

काशते च यतो ज्योतिस्तदनाख्येयमीश्वर ।

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अतो नामापरं चास्तु काशीति प्रथितं विभो ॥

In the stanza immediately preceding this, the city is called Muktikshetra. Krishna is speaking; and he says that the radiance of Kâsî emanates from Siva.

If, where they interpret Kâsî by "splendid," Colonel Wilford and his numerous followers intend to take the word from the adjective káśin, they have forgotten that the feminine is not kasi, but káśini. See the Asiatic Researches, Vol. III., p. 409.

Professor Wilson has already written: "It seems probable • that the city [of Kâsî] was founded, not by him [Kshattravṛiddha], but by his grandson or great-grandson, denominated Kâśa and Kâśirâja." Mr. James Prinsep's Benares Illustrated, p. 8. It is meant, here, I suppose, to hint a derivative connexion of Kâsî with Kâsa or Kâśirâja. The latter name Professor Wilson everywhere puts, erroneously, for "King Kâśi." See note 7 in the present page. 3 See the English Vishnu-puráṇa, Vol. IV., pp. 30-32.

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Compare Mânḍûkeya, from Mâṇḍûka; and Swâphalki, from Swaphalka.

So reads the Harivamsa, śl. 1734, in the best MSS. accessible to me.

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• Gana on Pânini, IV., II., 90; and the Brahma-purana.

7 Bhagavata-purána, IX., XVII., 4. In the Vishnu-purâna, he is called Kásirája; but the term, a compound, is there to be explained "Raja Kâsi." Differently, Kásirája, Káśipati, etc., descriptive of Ajâtaśatru, Divodâsa, Pratardana, and others, signify "Raja of the Kásis.” 'That काशिराज: may be the same as काशिषु नृपः is clear from the Mahabharata, Anuśâsana-parvan, śl. 1949 and 1952.

equally their subjects, were called Kâśis.1 Though at first a masculine appellation, Kâśi, as applied to the city so styled, is feminine.2 An exact parallel to this hypothetical evolution is not far to seek. The name of King Champa, femininized, became that of the metropolis of Anga, Champâ.

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The term Kâsi, denominating, if not a city, a people

1 Kâsi's successors were likewise known as Kâśyas and as Kâsikas. These terms are, all, actually employed. The last is, also, applied to persons or things pertaining to Kâśi.

* Kuntî, a woman, was so called from Kunti, a man.

Kâsî, according to the Vishnu-purána,—see the English translalation, Vol. IV., p. 159,—was the name of the wife of Bhîmasena. The reading is, however, erroneous, most probably. I find, as a variant, Kâseyî. This, like the corresponding Kâśyâ of the Mahabharata, Adi-parvan, śl. 3829, is a derivative of Kâsi.

3 See the English Vishnu-purâna, Vol. IV., p. 125.

I am not unaware of the gana on Pâņini, IV., II., 82.

"In the Mahabharata, frequent mention of Kâsî occurs," according to Professor Wilson, as quoted in Benares Illustrated, p. 8. I should be much surprised to find Kâsî mentioned even once in the Mahábhárata.

Not till medieval times, it seems, do we read of the city of Kâsî. To the authority, on this behalf, of the Purâņas may be added that of an inscription which I have deciphered and published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1862, pp. 14, 15. The document in question, a land-grant, was issued by Vinâyakapâla, Raja of Mahodaya or Kanauj, about the middle of the eleventh century, it may be. Kâsì is there indirectly described as in the vishaya of Vârânasi, in the bhukti of Pratishthâna. For Pratishthâna, vide infra, p. xxv., note 1.

It is, in my judgment, very doubtful indeed that Ptolemy's Kaooida metamorphoses Kâsi, as has been confidently asserted by Colonel Wilford and very many others. See the Asiatic Researches, Vol. III., p. 410; Vol. IX., p. 73.

Fă Hian may have intended to reproduce Kâśirajya, "kingdom of the Kâsis," in his words rendered by "le royaume de Kia chi.” Vide infra, p. xxviii., note 1.

and its chieftains, occurs repeatedly in Sanskrit works of all but the highest antiquity.' Of Kâśi, in whatever sense of the word, we cannot, however, collect, from indigenous records, materials from which to con

The expression age awaï, in the Dasa-kumâra-charita, means "Vârâṇasi, a city of the Kâsis." In the subjoined verse, from the Ramayana, Uttara-káṇḍa, XXXVIII., VI., 17, Vârâņasi is qualified by an expression meaning, the commentator says, “a city in the country of the Kâsis:"

तद्भवानद्य काशेयपुरीं वाराणसीं व्रज ।

Finally, in the Mahábhârata, Ádi-parvan, śl. 4083, 4084, we read of the king of the Kâsis as dwelling in the city of Vârâṇasî.

1 The oldest among them, probably, is Pânini, IV., II., 116; with which compare IV., II., 113. Then come the Satapatha-bráhmaṇa, the Brihad-áranyaka and Kaushitaki-brahmana Upanishads, etc., etc. In some of these works, the substantive is involved in the adjective Kâśya. This word, like Kâśika,-for which see the Mahabharata, Udyoga-parvan, sl. 5907,-means, etymologically, Kásian. But commentators on old writings explain it, and rightly, to signify "king of the Kâśis." Kâśirâja and Kâśya are used of the same person in the Bhagavad-gitá, I., 5, 17.

The Rigveda affords no warrant for connecting with the Kâsis any person whom it mentions. It speaks of Divodâsa, and it speaks of Pratardana; but only in later literature are they called father and son, and rulers of the Kâsis; and, where Kâtyâyana, in his Rigvedánukramanika, characterizes the latter as Káśirája, he may have expressed himself metachronically, under the influence of a modern tradition which he and his contemporaries accepted. As to the former, we find, indeed, in post-vaidik books, two Divodâsas; into whom a single personage seems to have been parted. One of them is son of Badhryaśwa, as in the Rigveda; but it is the other, the son of Bhimaratha, and father of Pratardana, that is called king of the Kâsis. It may be added, that there is no ground for considering Badhryaśwa and Bhimaratha to be two names of one and the same person. See the English Vishnu-purána, Vol. IV., pp. 33, and 145, 146. Badhryaśwa, not Bahwaśwa, is the reading of the Vishnu-purána. Correct accordingly Professor Wilson's translation of the Rigveda, Vol. III., p. 504, note 1. See, further, the Mahabharata, Anuśásana-parvan, Chapter XXX.

struct anything approaching a history. The kingdom of the Kâsis, and its rulers, as is evinced by the frequency of reference to them, enjoyed, from distant ages, more or less of notoriety; and this is, substantially, all that the Hindu memorials teach us.

The Purânas specify but one dynasty of Kâśi kings; a goodly catalogue, beginning, in the most authoritative of those works, with the son of Kâśa.1 To Kâśa, by a lapse of perhaps two centuries, succeeded Divodâsa, in whose reign Buddhism seems to have been still acting on the aggressive. In this synchronism there is no discernible improbability; and, with some likelihood, it embodies an historic fact. A reflexion of actual events may, likewise, be afforded in the story of the burning of Vârânasî by the discus of Vishnu. Of the age of Ajâtasatru, as of other very early leaders of the Kâśis, none but most vague indications have, as yet,

1 A Kâśa is named in the gana on Pânini, IV., I., 10. According to my five wretched copies of the Vayu-purâṇa, Kâśa was followed by Kâśaya (???), Râshtra (??), Dirghatapas, Dharma, Dhanwantari, Ketumat, Bhimaratha, Divodâsa.

The Brahmanda-purana has, in one place, Kâśa and Kâsîya, as sire and son, and, a little further on, instead of them, Kâsika and Kâseya. Kâsika, as evolving Kâśeya, must be considered as an optional elongation of Kâsi.

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See the English Vishnu-purána, Vol. IV., pp. 30-40.
We read, in the Vâyu-purdṇa :

दिवोदास इति ख्यातो वाराणस्यधिपो भवत् ।
एतस्मिन्नेव काले तु पुरीं वाराणसीं पुरा ।

शून्यां विवेशयामास क्षेमको नाम राक्षसः ॥

Then follows an account of the expulsion of Divodâsa from Vârâṇasî. So far as we know, he was the only king of the Kâsi family that had to do with that city.

See the Vishnu-purána, Book V., Chapter XXXIV.

been discovered. Some of these personages ruled, not at Benares, but at Pratishthâna;' and, at the time of the Muhammadan conquest, Benares and the surrounding country appertained to the throne of Kanauj.2

1 Its site was near Allahabad. Pûru's capital was Pratishṭhâna, in the kingdom of the Kâsis, according to the Ramayana, Uttarakánda, LIX., 18, 19:

चिदिवं स गतो राजा ययातिर्नजषात्मजः ॥

पूरुञ्चकार तद्राज्यं धर्मेण महतावृतः ।

प्रतिष्ठाने पुरवरे काशिराज्ये महायशाः ॥

Before Pûru, his father, Yayâti, "lord of all the Kâsis," reigned at Pratishthâna. Mahabharata, Udyoga-parvan, él. 3905 and 3918.

Purûravas received Pratishthâna in gift from his father Sudyumna. English Vishnu-purána, Vol. III., p. 237. Also see Burnouf's Bhagavata-purána, Vol. III., Preface, pp. XCVII.-XCIX.

Pratishthâna appears as a district of the kingdom of which Kanauj was the metropolis, in comparatively recent times. Vide supra, p. xxii., note 4.

Pratishthâna is the name of a kingdom, or of part of one, in the Katha-sarit-sagara, VI., 8.

2 Vide supra, p. xxii., note 4. Several Sanskrit land-grants have been published, -two among them by myself,- from which it appears that the kings of the latest dynasty of Kanauj, from Madanapâla to the unfortunate Jayachandra, were masters of Benares, in succession to their predecessors; and that they were so is fully made out by the Muhammadan historians.

In the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches is a professed transcript of a short inscription from a stone, now long disappeared from sight, which was exhumed near Benares, in 1794. We read, therein, of a king of Gauḍa, Mahîpâla, father of Sthirapâla and Vasantapâla; and, at the end, the date 1083. An easy credulity may accept these statements, no longer possible of verification; but there still remains the question as to the era of the year 1083, whether Vikramâditya's, or Salivâhana's - better, Sâtavâhana's,— or Harsha's, or whose. Not only are the blunders in this inscription, as printed, so many and so gross that we are forbidden to suppose they were in the original; but they provoke the surmise that the interspersed patches of the record which read as if correct

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